THE ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLE OF REFORM. 



AN AIJDRESS 



];F,r;iVKrj;T) HKFoiih: thk 



ALUMNI ASSOCIATION 



PENN8TLTANIA COLLEGE. 

GETTYSBURG, PA., 
ATTOTST 9th, 1865, 

15V in^v. M. valkjVtjne, a.m. 



Gettysburg; : 

Ar(niixi}A('(iii k wible/book & .loii nuxTKUK. 

XOIJTHKAST COUXIMl OK TMI-: l)iAM<>M). 



THE ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLE OF EEFORM. 



AN ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



ALUMNI ASSOCIATION 



01* 



PENNSYLYANIA COLLEGE, 

GETTYSBURG, PA., 

AUGUST 9th, 1865, , 

BY REV. M: VALENTmE, A. M. 



GETTYSBURG : 

AUGHINBAUGTI & WIBLE, BOOK & JOB PRINTERS, 

NORTH-EAST CORNER OF THE DIAMOND. 

1865. 






In Gxchangre 
Peabody Institute 

Baltimore 
AUG 2 1928 



Pennsylvania College, 

August 10th, 1865. 
Eev. M. Valentine, 

Dear Sir : — We have been instructed by the Alumni Associa- 
tion to thank you for your excellent Address, and to request a copy for 
publication. 

With sentiments of high regard, 
Very truly yours, 

M. L. STOEVER, 
J. E. GRAEFF, 
J. E. SMITH. 



Reading, Pa., August 14tli, 1865. 
Gentlemen : 

In compliance with* the request of the Alumni Association, con- 
veyed in your note, the manuscript of the Address is placed in your 
hands. 

Most sincerely yours, 

M. VALENTINE. 
Prof. M. L. Stoevek, 
Rev. J. E. Graeff, 
Hon. J. E. Smith. 



ADDRESS 



Fellow Alumni of Pennsylvania College: 

Our times are marked by a peculiar emphasis in reforma- 
tory theory and effort. The stirring events of the last few 
years have added fresh impulse to the ardor with which the 
earnest mind of our country was before directed to the pos- 
sibilities and means of a better condition of man's personal 
and social state. Our ears discern a sound of unusual ve- 
locity in the chariot-wheels of progress, as Providence is 
driving them over the crushed fruits of former evils. There 
is an eager endeavor to reconstruct and reform, and a general 
expectation that the movement of events is onward to wor- 
thier and happier developments of life and society than have 
yet been enjoyed. 

We cannot be indifferent to these things. Our contact with 
the thinking mind of the day, and much more, our obligation 
to bear a worthy part in every movement connected with the 
public good, oblige us to give them an earnest attention. It 
is our privilege and glory, to cast our influence in favor of 
the true and right in every question that concerns human 
welfare. These movements are not incipient, but the un- 
folding and ripening fruit of agitations and efforts in earlier 
times. They involve and recall the whole subject of moral 
and social reform. As it is not all gold that glitters, so it is 
not all reform that assumes that popular name. We must 
sift the true from the false, and discriminate the diamond 
from the dust. In the discussion and experience of the past, 
and in the emphatic teaching of current events, present in- 



6 

quiry has attained vantage position for the comprehension of 
the entire reformatory problem. The constant effort of rest- 
less theorists and devoted workers, has thrown off results, 
successful, injurious, or mingled, which show, in no doubtful 
light, the line along which all true endeavor must move. It 
is our purpose, standing as we all do, in the midst of this 
light, to mark and present, as a subject appropriate to our 
present annual Alumni fellowship. 

The Essential Principle of Reform. 

Our discussion will involve a presentation of what we 
conceive to be this true principle, and illustrations of its 
correctness, in examples of failure by its violation, and suc- 
cess by its observance. Success, in this relation, may be 
regarded as a seal of correctness ; since it indicates the 
guidance of Heaven's own laws, for the promotion of human 
welfare. Attempted reforms that fall, like barren blossoms, 
fruitless of blessing, reveal thus their want of proper grafting 
into the true living principle. 

I. Our first guiding lines, as we approach this subject, ap- 
pear in recalling the source of all reformatory endeavor. It 
is the pressure of the evils sought to be removed. Mankind 
has ever been groaning in bondage to them. Along with the 
sigh for spiritual redemption, all. ages have uttered constant 
pleadings for deliverance from the burdens of social and 
economic disorder and wretchedness. There has been a 
ceaseless and sore consciousness, that man is out of his or- 
ganic and constitutional sphere, and society is disordered, 
moving with distressing frictions and inequalities. No time 
has been without men with eyes to see and hearts to feel the 
existence of these evils. Out of this oppression, wrong and 
unrest, there has come a ceaseless longing for a better era of 
the race. Men have dreamed of a state of things, in which 
injustice, crime, slavery, want and broken-hearted misery 
should not be found. "A better time coming," has ever 
risen, as a bright star of hope, to the view of an oppressed 
and disharmonized world. The misery-smitten, unless all 



,7 

hope has died, are ever dreaming out schemes of relief and 
happiness. Whether blindly or not, the hope has been cease- 
lessly cherished, that the Paradise that blooms not in the 
present, will yet bloom one in the future of the earth. De- 
spite all past failures, men have anticipated some happy ad- 
justment of human relations, of commercial, social, domestic 
and governmental forces, that will right existing evils, and 
bring about a sort of social Arcadia in which all men shall 
bq happy and contented. 

The phenomenon of this ever-restless reformatory en- 
deavor, wild and chimerical as it sometimes is, is, therefore, 
deeply significant of disorganization and wretchedness in 
man's moral and social relations. It is the world struggle 
against a condition whose pains it feels, but whose meaning 
it does not comprehend. It is the social sigh for a better 
state — a protest against what is, as not what it ought to be. 
It is the writhing of the bound Prometheus. And as one 
plan or item of reform after another is pressed into energetic 
trial, Pope's poor philosophy, and worse theology, ''What 
e'er is, is right," receives but few believers. 

II. A glance at the history of these efforts, recalling the 
character and number of philanthropic attempts to remodel 
society or eliminate its evils, will prepare us still better for a 
satisfactory statement of the true principles of reform. Re- 
form is many-sided, and its meaning is to be determined by 
the department of life, political, social, or individual, in 
which it works. The word sometimes becomes local and 
technical. In England, reform and anti-reform, express op- 
posing systems of governmental policy, forming the battle- 
field on which "Whigs" and "Tories" manoeuvre their politi- 
cal forces. In our country, the word is used in a sense more 
generic, and expressive of progress in every department and 
relation of life. The full history of reforms and reformers 
would require an examination of many "dusty folios." Be- 
fore the era of Christianity, Diogenes pressed biting apo- 
thegms against abounding follies and inequalities. Plato, 
leaving the hard actual, and manipulating the more pliant 



ideal, developed a theoretic Republic, as the model after 
"which society should be organized for the cure of its evils* 
Within the Jewish Commonwealth, at the period of its de- 
cline after the Babylonian captivity, the Essenes constituted 
a reformatory association, to bring new and powerful appli- 
ances to bear on the ills of society, to stem its corruptions 
and pour sanitary and life-giving power into its veins. They 
were a brotherhood of simple but rigid ascetics, refraining 
from oaths and slavery, holding property in common, dis- 
carding marriage and living in pure celibacy — the "Sha- 
kers" of Judaic times. Later, and in the Christian world, 
Luther and his co-laborers, though not looking to social re- 
form or temporal ameliorations as the end of effort, brought 
into operation mighty ngencies, whose reformatory power has 
been deep, radical, wide-spread and permanent. We find 
Tomaso Campanella, in Italy, proposing radical political 
reconstruction, that brought him into prison ; and James 
Harrington, in England, idealizing another model common- 
wealth, in an imaginary Oceana. In this, however, he was 
preceded by Sir Thomas More, with his well-known "Uto- 
pia" — the dream of a perfect political and social organiza- 
tion, remarkable for the incongruity of tolerating personal 
slavery, yet disallowing individual property. The socialistic 
speculations of Coleridge, though very visionary, are inter- 
esting. In his early life, he was full of the idea of the social 
and political regeneration of the world. Robert Lovell, and 
the poet Southey, warmly seconded his magnificent concep- 
tion, which, when actualized, was to restore the earth to 
Eden-like freedom and happiness. But the world was too old 
and stubborn to be regenerated and governed according to 
their novel theory. Changing their scheme, but still dream- 
ing the pleasant but chimerical dream of human perfectabil- 
ity, they planned the organization of a grand "Pantisocra- 
cy" — a realized Platonic Republic — to be founded in 
America, on the waters of the Susquehanna or the Missis- 
sippi, where perfect liberty and pure philosophy should drive 
away the ills of corrupt society. But the foundations of 



9 

this semi-Paridisaic commonwealth were never laid, save in 
the brain of the visonary projectors. In France, the history 
of Encyclopedism is largely a history of social and political 
reform. Its fruits ripened and fell in the French Revolution. 
The name of Claude Henri Count de Simon is well known as 
heading a band of social regenerators. Returning to France, 
after service in our own Revolution, he published an elabor- 
ate scheme for the reconstruction and elevation of society. 
He assumed that Love^ being brought into efficient operation, 
would solve all difSculties, redress all grievances, and. remove 
all abuses, in the condition of mankind. St. Simon not only 
attempted to introduce new social principles, but a new reli- 
gion — a full philosophical system of morals and government, 
hy which all the ills of humanity were to be removed — a real 
gospel of social happiness. From St. Simonism, we are 
called to the recent speculations of Robert Owen. To the 
mind of Owen, all the ills in the social economy have flowed 
from religion, priests and priest-craft, and he presents him- 
self as the apostle of a reform that shall banish these, and 
associate men under the guidance and governance of simple 
Reason. The associations, sprung from his teaching, are anti- 
Christian, and their exertions are directed quite as much 
against religion as against social evils. But, most prominent, 
perhaps, in the catalogue of these movements, has been the 
rise of Fourierism. The theory of this French reformer 
would wholly recast society, and organize it in communities 
or associations, not excluding individual property, but labor- 
ing under common direction, carrying on all trades and arts 
within their own circle, and forming, in every feature, save 
personal goods, a communist brotherhood. Socialist commu- 
nities, after his system, have been established in France and 
in this country. The hearts of some of our more radical 
reformers have been strongly drawn to the scheme. In 
^'Hints towards Reform," by Horace Greely, in 1857, Four- 
ier's social architecture is accorded high praise, and looked 
upon as a harbinger of a better era. The author proposes a 
republican organization of labor and society, after the Four- 
2 



10 

ierian ideal, and sees no reason "why, in the end, the wildest 
dreams of the fanatical believer in human progress may not 
ultimately be realized," (p. 45.) 

Within the last twenty years, our country has heard every 
possible change rung upon the charming word "Reform." 
Old plans have been galvanized by new reformser. The spirit 
of innovation and change has left few of our ancient habi- 
tudes undisturbed, whether good, bad or indifferent. From 
some quarters we have had panaceas for the whole hurt of 
humanity ; from others, more sober, we have been favored 
with pleasant, if not successful, speciiBcs for various local dis- 
orders, both acute and chronic. If numbers were efficient, 
we have had enough troublings of the water, by angels of 
reform, to heal all the woes in the crowded porches of hu- 
manity. But the waters become quiet a^a'm, and the mean- 
ings of distress in the porches have hardly been abated. 
Emerson has conversed across the waves with the spirit of 
Carlisle, and we have had Transcendentalism, with its mystic 
schemes, both moral and political. We have had Parkerisra, 
Fanny Wrightism, Shaker exercises, and economies. We 
have been called, not to repentance for the past, but reforma- 
tion for the future, by Phrenology and Mesmerism. Woman's 
Rights' conventions have solemnly informed us that the woes 
of society have sprung from man's usurpations and tyranny, 
and the rectification of all is to be attained in summonino; 
her to the ballot, the pulpit and the legislative hall. Before 
our old-fogy minds have had time to grow calm from this, 
Spiritualism presents its ghostly form before us, and accounts 
anew for our manifold evils, prescribes the way of deliver- 
ance, and rebukes our slowness of belief by the noisy racket 
of multitudinous dancing tables. We have had fierce Philip- 
pics against almost all the existing methods of life, labor and 
social adjustment. Our interest in new movements has been 
kept in constant tension ; and we are even now, by "Gail 
Hamilton," in the "New Atmosphere" in which she believes 
the world may breathe in a better peace, called to examine 
into the propriety of so amending the old marriage institu- 



11 

tion as to leave the continuance of the altar-bound bond at 
the pleasure of the disappointed party. Every part of the 
moral, domestic, social, and political structure, under whose 
shadows, either pleasant, or distressing, the past has been 
delighted or compelled to sit, is feeling the blows of vigorous 
innovation. Institutions that are to stand, must have more 
than the moss of age for their safety. 

III. Now, above the background of this restless dissatis- 
faction with the existing, and ceaseless endeavor after a hap- 
pier state of things, we must read, where God has written it, 
the only true and essential principle of reform, overlooked 
and refused by so many who liave assumed to be its apostles. 
Long has the truth been shining on the darkness, but the 
darkness has comprehendefl it not. Every real reform and 
all genuine progress, that shall remove evils and tend to ad- 
just human affairs in harmony, prosperity and happiness? 
must be attained in the way of return to divine order and 
conformity to divine constitution. The disappearance of 
earth's disorder, discord and wretchedness, will ever be in 
direct proportion to the adjustment of px)litical institutions, 
social relations and individual life to Heaven's laws of right 
and love. These laws can be read distinctly and surely only 
on the pages of the volume of revelation. Christianity, as 
God's disclosure of the method of his government, the condi- 
tion of our race, and the meaning of its ills, as an authorita- 
tive announcement of moral relations, human duties, and of 
the appointed remedy for the hurt and sin of the earth, fur- 
riiahes the only and the essential guide in reformatory effort.. 
The leaves of this tree are for the healing of the nations. 
Here, and here alone, we believe we can find the true and 
sure principle of either moral, social or political reform — the 
reception and application of the doctrines, laws and forces of 
the religion of Jesus Christ. The needed amelioration of 
the state of man could not originate or acquire corrective 
force on the plane of the earthly. It descended into the 
world's disorder from a hijjher plane. CllRTST CAME AS THE 
Keformek of the earth. Included in his officce of Sa- 



n 4 

viour of souls, is this office for this world. He came to send 
a "sword" against the wrongs and oppressions that have 
lacerated sorrowed mankind. He came, with truths and 
principles that should wage perpetual war against all wrongs, 
and whose acceptance should re-adjast personal and social 
movements into harmony and peace. Others may be re- 
formers indeed, in a subordinate position and agency, when 
they lay hold of the principles of his religion and bring 
them into more eiTectual application to each or any depart- 
ment of life. He 'who works along a different line of en- 
deavor, simply pushes the old disorders into worse complica- 
tions. The more fiercely he drives his efforts, at variance 
with Christianity, the more he does, to deny society a return 
to the only condition in which the principles of God's moral 
government will allow it prosperity and happiness. 

In thus presenting the necessary law of reform, it is done 
in no forgetfulness of the fact, that it is based altogether on 
the Christian theory of humanity and social evil. The whole 
subject is viewed from the Christian stand- point. It is main- 
tained that revelation, completed in Christ, furnishes the only 
solution, as well as the only effectual corrective, of the evils 
which reformers would eliminate from life. And why should 
we ignore the satisfying light which Christianity has shed on 
this subject ? Why should we sink the Christian into the 
pagan, in deciding it ? Would it not be inexplicable per- 
verseness, to leave the mountain light and elevation on which 
revelation has placed us, and descend back into the dreary 
region where the dim tapers of reason and human philosophy 
have guided useless speculation ? Could any one maintain 
respect for either his observation or his judgment, who would 
deny the cumulative demonstration of eighteen centuries that 
the Gospel is Heaven's ordained power for the regeneration 
and adjustment of life in its best possible condition ? We 
envy not the mind that can adjudge either the conclusions of 
heathen philosophy or the proposals of infidel empiricism 
wiser than the directions of tlie Christian's Bible. We be- 
lieve the voice, us we look on Jesus, and hear the utterance. 



13 

"Beliold a greater than Solomon is here !" The Divine Phi- 
losophy, personal, ethical and social, descended in Jesus, and 
"Behold, a greater than Plato is here !" It seems like irrev- 
erence to come down to some others, and repeat, ^'Behold, a 
greater than St. Simon, or Owen, or Fourier, or Emerson, or 
Parker, is here !" 

But, that we are thus to find the method and energy of 
true reform in Christianity, as embodied in its entire circle 
of truths, principles and directions for the various relations 
of life, may be easily made apparent. 

1. It alone adequately recognizes and takes into account 
the real cause of evil. Many persons who have arrogated to 
themselves the distinctive name of Reformer, have been phi- 
losophically and theologically disqualified for the assumed 
work. They have cut their sounding lines too short to 
reach to the origin of the wrongs they proposed to remove. 
They have been unbelievers in the existence of the roots of 
the tree, at whose branches they have smitten and hewn so 
vigorously. A false premise has underlain their whole sys- 
tem of treatment. They have generally assumed the essen- 
tial soundness and perfectability of human nature. They 
have gone on the theory, that all its ills arise only from cir- 
cumstances, or some mal-adjustment and administration of 
external relations.. Lately, a wing of them under the guide 
of Phrenology, has insisted on the innocence of crime, on the 
ground of an unfortunate cranial development of the sup- 
posed crinf)inal. He is to be pitied, not punished, for what 
he could not help. There '^as been a failure rightly to ap- 
preciate, or a total denial of, the great truth of the Fall, and 
the radical depravity of our nature. If, however, it be true, 
that this depravity is a fact, despite its refusal by such men, 
and that a cure must always go to the root of the disease, 
their appliances must necessarily be ineffectual. Missing the 
cause, they must miss the remedy. They are physicians who 
are doctoring at the symptoms, but think not of even a 
homeopathic administration to the disease. The roots of all 
man's miseries, and society's troubles, are in the inmost soul 



14 

of the individual. Sin has brought into the commonwealth, 
of the human soul utter anarchy, and violent and grinding^ 
tyranny. The conscience and the affections are at variance. 
Passion rules. Conscience, though drugged or down-trodden, 
protests. This inner disorder and infliction, is the pattern 
and origin of the outer anarchy and wretchedness. Th& 
whole man, internally and externally, is in rebellion against 
the laws, under which he was formed. Sin has thrown him 
out of his sphere, and he moves in perpetual clashings in all 
his relations. Reform is solemnly needed wherever the thou- 
sands of our unsphered and disharmonized race collide in 
social, economic, or civil disorder. But there is, according 
to Christian philosophy, but one root to all the myriad evils 
that have attracted the attention, and reformatory effort of 
the philanthropic. And we cannot but feel it, as an intima- 
tion of the deeper and truer philosophy of reform which should 
supersede the world's superficial blunderings, when we hear 
the Fore-runner of Christ say : "And now the axe is laid at 
the root of the tree." That which strikes higher than this 
only cuts off some branches, and leaves the force of the evil 
life untouched, to shoot up again in perhaps more vigorous 
and crooked manifestations. When Elisha, the prophet, was 
to heal the streams of Jericho, he was directed to go forth to 
the spring of the waters, and cast in the salt there. To be 
forever trying to sweeten the streams, and take no account 
of the ever-active bitter fountain, is a symbol of the reform 
that does not recognize the Christian doctrine of the innate 
corruption and sin of the race. . St. Simon, assuming the 
origin of social distempers, not in the depravity of the indi- 
vidual heart, but in want of social unity, expected moral, in- 
tellectual, and industrial perfection from a radical reorgani- 
zation of external relations. Fourier based his whole social 
fabric on the assumption, that "the source of all evil is to be 
found in the wide-spread ignorance, which, without compre- 
hending human nature aright, throws it into false position, 
and puts all its fine-spun harmonies into discord." (Morell's 
Hist, of Philos. p. 384.) Many of the more pretentious 



15 

philosophical tendencies of the times, have fallen into the 
same incapacity for effective reform. The whole circle of 
transcendental speculation does not discover the essential 
corruption of the race. Pantheism knows nothing of the 
Fall. The French school of Positivism, while it has eyes to 
see so many things that do not exist, does not discern this 
fact, which makes answer for itself from ever page of human 
history. "According to the views of Pantheism and the 
Positive Philosophy," says Guizot, in his "Meditations," (p. 
35,) "Divine Providence, and human liberty, the origin of 
evil, the commingling and the strife of good and evil in the 
world and in man, the imperfection of the present order of 
things and the destiny of man, the prospect of the establish- 
ment of order in the future ; these are all mere dreams, 
freaks of man's thought; no such questions exist; inasmuch 
as the world is eternal, it is in its actual state complete, nor- 
mal and definitive, though at the same time progressive. 
The remedy for the moral and physical evils that afflict man- 
kind must be sought, not in any power superior to the world, 
but simply in the progress of the sciences, and the advance of 
human enlightenment." What can be done by these systems 
whose very corner-stone is laid in a false conception of hu- 
man nature ? If Christianity has taken the right diagnosis 
of the disease, it alone is competent to describe the remedy. 
2. But, further, Christianity, in the integrity of its doc- 
trines and precepts, alone brings with it the regenerating and 
corrective energies indispensable to true and permanent re- 
form. No humanitarian theory proposes any thing higher 
than merely natural forces. It would effect everything by 
organization, external readjustment ■ and association. It 
would regenerate men in the mass — melt down a whole com- 
munity, and recast it in harmony and beauty. It proposes 
agrarian, or coinmunist schemes. It would remodel the world 
by an idea, or educate the race into purity, justice, liberty, 
equality and beatific brotherhood. By these various means, 
it would cut off all the parasitic excrescences, the wrongs, 
oppressions and miseries of the race, and make the so-called 



16 

corrupt tree of humanity bring forth only good fruit, and 
grow as round and orderly and even and precise, as a well- 
clipped box-shrub, or arbor-vitse hedge. But in the principle 
of Chrstianity, there is a new and higher factor of power 
introduced into the work of reform. It begins with the re- 
generation of the individual, and commences his recovery to 
his proper place and sphere, from which he had been thrown 
by sin — the sphere of order, harmony and happiness. It 
proposes to act on the mighty mass of society, by thus act- 
ing in reformatory power, on the millions of individuals that 
compose it. God reforms the face of the earth out of the 
desolations of winter, by new life in every tree, plant, flower, 
and spear of grass that clothes its thousand hills and valleys in 
green. It is by the change in the unit buds that the aggregate 
result is wrought. It is in individual hears, as the fountain of 
actual life, either good or bad, that the initial reform must 
take place. Schemers have been able to bring no adequate 
rectifying power into the heart. They have had no branch to 
cast into this bitter fountain. But Christianity does not stop 
here. It furnishes the only sure principles for the adjust- 
ment and regulation of all the external relations and move- 
ments of Christianized humanity. It is God's prescription 
for the re-ordering of his broken and anarchichal race. 
From the individual, it proceeds to the family, and organizes 
there the smallest circle of social life, with laws and forces 
to secure its best possible condition. From the family, it 
extends its regulative direction to men as communities, en- 
gaged in all the varied proper business of life. It pre- 
scribes rules of justice, kindness and common brotherhood, 
under God's common Fatherhood, that do, in exact obedience 
to them, remove wrong, oppression, injury and want, from 
among men. It treats man as a social being, and brings its 
mighty moral forces to sanctify and harmonize all his inter- 
human relations. Society, permeated by the spirit and life 
of Christianity, and moving, in every respect, according to 
Christian principles, rules, and love, would exhibit the near- 
est attainable tjuccess in the long, fruitless effort to locate the 



Garden of Eden.- From the commnnity, it ascends to the 
State, and defines Cnssar's duties as well as Cicsar's dues. 
Government becomes an "ordinance of God," "for the terror 
of evil-doers and the praise of them that do well." The po- 
litical principles that lie in Christianity, are the guides to 
liberty, equality and prosperity in the nation. Developed 
into complete realization, they would present a common- 
wealth more true to human interests and welfare, than even 
a realized "E-epublic" of Plato, or ''Utopia" of Sir Thomas 
More. Thus, Christianity touches with regenerating, heal- 
ing, sanctifying, regulative power, the whole circle of human 
relations, from centre to circumference. It begins with the 
fatal cause of all external disorders, the corruption of the 
human heart, which has sported with the weakness and dtiied 
the strength of all human contrivances to subdue them. 
And then it widens its control into an adjustment of all ex- 
ternal relations, and puts the whole life, customs, institutions 
and enjoyments of men under the direction of Justice -and 
Love, and into harmony with Seav.en's laws of order and 
happiness: — with the Divine Constitution. The wheels within 
the wheels will work with no distressing frictions, if Christi- 
anity — this hand of God reached down from the skies — is 
permitted to rectify and regulate human affairs. 

3. We may read the necessity of clinging to this principle 
in the disaster of all reform that disregards it. There are 
trees of reform that God has withered along every road 
where men have planted at variance with the directions of 
his word. There are heaps of brick and slime from many a 
tower of Babel, started by social architects who have not 
consulted the oracles of revelation. There are many care- 
fully-carved pillars lying about where some Samson of re- 
form, whose eyes infidelity put out, buried his thousands in 
ruins, by pressing against the only columns that can support 
the temple of society. Every reform that has not run 
along the line of the principle I have indicated, has proved 
a blank failure, or left another moral plague for the injury 
and misery of community. Agrarian or communist theories 



18 
I 
contravene the truth that property, as well as religion, is an ordi- 
nance of G od, and thej aggravate the miseries of the inequality 
of which they complain. The socialistic schemes, that, in the ^ 
interest of any sort of transcendental unions, changeable at 
the caprice of some mysterious spiritual affinities, impair the 
scriptural sanctity of the marriage bond, or that organize 
Shaker economies in total contempt of the relation, have in- 
flicted fresh sores, or deformities on society. The radicalism 
that tries to reform Moses and the Gospel, as well as the 
Church's exhibition of them, has never failed to bear fruit 
delusive and bitter. In the French Revolution, the atheistic 
and misguided theories of the day culminated in confusion 
and blood. It was a grand and sublime idea, that the people 
should be froe and self-governing. But the infidelity that 
.mingled in the movement defeated the aim. The tree of 
Liberty which was planted, withered in the breath of men 
who shouted the inauguration of a proposed religion of Rea- 
son^ in the place of down-trodden Chris.tianity. What pop- 
ular hope looked upon as a Reform, Infidelity turned into 
disintegration, falling into an anarchy that had to be arrested 
by a stronger despotism. A Murat and Robespierre ever 
prepare the way for a Bonaparte. The small organization, 
gathered under the banner of St. Simonism, fell into such 
gross immorality that it was broken up by the civil authority. 
Owenism, that promised so much from the expulsion of 
priest-craft, has exhibited its results in a few more running 
sores on the body social. And the Fourier garden, that waa 
to restore Eden, has brought forth only weeds. It has become 
the home for the revels of Deism and Atheism, where knots of 
malcontents fulminate against the ordinances of Heaven, and 
add virulence to the disorders of society, whose woes they 
profess to deplore. The reformers that have cut themselves 
loose from the moorings of the Divine Word, or allied them- 
selves to any merely humanitarian theory of our nature, have 
uniformly paralyzed their best energies for good, even in the 
direction of.true improvement, and made the line of their efforts 
a scene, more of destroying than remedial power. Theodore 



19 

Parker may be taken as a representative man, and an illus- 
tration, in this particular. The sod is now on his grave, but 
in his day, he was a restless and vigorous agitator. With a 
strong and earnest mind, working with great rapidity and 
brilliance, he was intellectually qualified to achieve a marked 
mission. He had a keen eye to see, and a deep heart to 
feel, the wrongs and ills that disfigure and oppress society. 
He threw his strong and impetuous soul into the work of re- 
form, and his bold and striking style of thought and oratory 
enabled him to wield an unusual popular sway. Had he 
seized the right lever, he might have uplifted many a burden 
and wrong and misery from society. He might have been a 
strong angel of relief and succor, of deliverance and joy, to 
the down-trodden and the injured. But he ran into a radi- 
calism that undertook to correct the teaching of Moses and 
of Jesus Christ. He discarded the Bible doctrine of the 
fall and of sin. Human nature needed only a right education, 
and it would bear all excellent fruitage. He placed the 
Christian Scriptures in the same category with the Vedas, 
the Zendavesta, or the Koran. He arraigned some of the 
grandest acts of Christ as fractured by sin and self, and re- 
fused to call Jesus, Master in theologic doctrine or practical 
wisdom. He spoke patronizingly sometimes of the Nazar- 
ene youth as doing very well for his day and nation, but as 
one still to be outgrown by the coming man. He denounced 
every distinctive doctrine of the Cross, and the Biblical ideas 
of God and man, and the relations between them. With an 
over-weening self-consciousness, he seemed to have no settled 
faith in anything save Theodore Parker, and a chimerical 
''Absolute Religion," to which Christianity, with its hinder- 
ing influence on progress, would yet give place. With these 
views he claimed to be an apostle of reform. With afiluent 
stores of shining natural thought, he poured out novel sug- 
gestions of improvement, in lecture and sermon. He 
preached the essential nobility of man, and called for the 
"excelsior" spirit, to develop him into greatness and good- 
ness. He demanded more tenderness in penal legislation. 



20 

He said many good and brilliant things. Abounding cor- 
ruptions, wrongs, and crimes, were dealt with, with no gentle 
hand. Though most intolerant himself, he preached a beau- 
tiful evangel of magnanimity and liberality. Even if it was 
with acrimony and sarcasm, he called for the reign of charity 
and affection. He pleaded nobly for the freedom and eleva- 
tion of the oppressed and lowly. He hated Slavery with 
cordial intensity, and dealt it many an earnest blow, which^ 
though it fell in the Music Hall of Boston, was felt often in 
Carolina, and caused a growl of wrath on the waters of the 
Rio Grande. He might have done a sublime and lasting 
work, whose beatitudes should be tasted for many genera- 
tions. But what has been the summing up of his labors ? 
He unsettled the faith of thousands in the religion of the 
Bible. He awakened popular condemnation of some wrongs, 
but the infidelity with which he wrought, effaced more of 
good than it cured of evil. He was mighty to destroy ; but 
he could reconstruct nothing. He ran the ploughshare 
through the only soil, in which virtue, righteousness and hu- 
man excellence can grow. He blighted society more than he 
blessed it. Taking a position outside of Christianity, and 
working, not in the advancing line and onward current of its 
great principles and forces, but in conflict with its essential 
life, his activity was a serious hindrance to reform. He 
shook men's faith in prayer^ which alone can keep the heart 
of a reformer cheerful, sweet and strong. He shook men's 
faith in the Bible, from which all reforms have rolled. He 
weakened men's sense of sm, furnishing them with a ready- 
made apology for the crimes against which he fought, drug- 
ging the conscience with opiates of his theology, while he 
struck at it with the goad of his ethics. While he spoke one 
sharp word against a special sin, he spoke ten against the 
possibility of any sin. His theology killed the air, so that 
reform could not live there. When we see how fundamental 
error permeated and poisoned all his work, notwithstanding 
the courage, and even sublime fury, of his assault on mighty 
sins, we arc forced to regard his career, on the whole, as a 



21 

dark and backward eddy in the great on-sweeping current of 
human reform. Parker was an example of too many of our 
modern agitators. They uproot more of good than they de- 
stroy of evil. No one can be regarded as a true reformer^ 
that puts into his teaching an anti-Christian leaven. He 
may press some valuable practical truth, with noble heroism, 
yet with it he conveys a poison-drop, which, flowing with the 
stream of the given truth, over the general fields of life, will 
kill the plants the stream was expected to nourish, and leave 
a sterile waste instead of the bloom and opulence of a garden 
of God. 

4. It is instructive to test, by this principle, some sup- 
posed items of reform that are pressed in the present day. 
Some agitators are still urging an improvement on the Bible 
plan of punishing crime. They have raised a great cry 
against the death penalty, or indeed any penalty that 
amounts to adequate punishment to great criminals. The 
old rule of criminal jurisprudence, that comes to us with the 
signature of God upon it, reads : "Whoso sheddeth man's 
blood, hy man shall his blood be shed." "Ye shall take no 
satisfaction for the life of the murderer; he shall surely be 
put to death." This divine direction for the State, has never 
been repealed in the new dispensation, in which we are ad- 
monished that the civil magistrate bears the sword, — symbol 
of the death power — for the terror of evil-doers. But true 
to the instincts of a certain kind of reform, which, represents 
all Bible directions as fit for a dark and infantile age of the 
world, but destined to be left behind in the grand progress of 
humanity, many have sought to abolish this rule as a relic of 
barbarism. A morbid sentiment of mercy has been allowed 
to canker the sense of justice. A humanitarian idea of God 
sinks all his justice in his benevolence, and would sink all 
punishment in reformatory love. Men talk about the incon- 
gruity of a gibbet for the offender after heaven has erected 
the cross for the rescue of the guilty. They speak as if 
justice had left the Divine throne, and all punishment been 
banished from the circle of divine procedure and approval. 



22 

But a few years ago, many seemed to be becoming opposed 
to all punishment — not believing much in it hereafter, and 
just as little here. A sickly sentimentality was for treating 
the criminal only with pity, tenderness, kindness and moral 
lectures. The dogma was, that the only proper use of pun- 
ishment, is the reformation of the criminal, leaving out of 
view its office of maintaining the majesty and authority of 
law, and, thereby, the order of society, and the safety of 
person and property of the innocent. Popular lecturers, and 
papers of wide circulation and much ability, were engaged 
in spreading abroad the sickliest stuff about the inhumanity 
of what was called "judicial murder," and cankering to maw- 
kish sentimentalism the old moral sense of the justice of 
penal inflictions. Law was undermined in the imparing of 
its sanctions. Many of the States abolished capital punish- 
ment. Healthful and righteous indignation against the 
crime, was submerged in the deep feeling of commiseration 
for the criminal. Popular sentiment was turned against the 
execution of justice, and it looked as though the majesty of 
law was to be brought down, to lick the dust at the feet of 
every convicted wretch that deserved to be swung above the 
earth as an offering to justice and a vindication of the safety 
of society. But the bitter fruits of this wisdom of reformers 
that is not from above, soon began to appear in abounding 
crime, and insecurity of life. Many of the States that re- 
formed Heaven's penal code, have been obliged to recede 
from their fancied progress. And God's judgments, teach- 
ing lessons through the shocking crimes of the last fooj* 
years of rebellion, guerrilla murders and prison starvations, 
and President-assassination, have done something toward 
bringing back a proper sense of the sacredness and glory of 
justice. Deep has been calling unto deep, for a return of 
some of the old puritan sternness, of righteousness. Var- 
ious facts in the current treatment of great offenders, and a 
disposition to conciliate rather than hurt, quite a catalogue 
of crimson-dyed wretches, make it seem doubtful whether 
the proper nerve has yet been put into the emasculated sen- 



23 

timent of justice in our land. But the Striptures teach us, 
and Providence is confirming the teaching, which a false re- 
form had well nigh obliterated from the public mind, that 
JUSTICE, in its place, is as holy a thing as mercy is in iis 
place. One, of old, sat upon a throne — a man after God's 
own heart — whose imprecatory prayers have been a perplex- 
ity to our humanitarian reformers. If they understood the 
true relations of justice and mercy, they would be perplexed 
no more. 

5. A similar text might be applied to a phase of the po- 
litical philosophy of some of our reformers. Out of our 
open Bible and Protestant Christianity, has come the true 
conception of liberty, the rights and equality of man, lying 
at the foundation of our free institutions. But there is a 
radicalism that would deprave liberty into mere license, and 
dismantle government of its rightful powers, by declaring it 
not an "ordinance of God," but a mere creature of general 
compact. Discarding the divine element in religion, it dis- 
cards it also in government. Its conception is altogether in- 
fidel. It does not see "God's minister" in the civil officer, 
set to maintain order among men. It comprehends no sanc- 
tity in his position, but that growing out of his elevation by 
men. It fails to see that, though a majority may change or 
modify the outward form of government, there is "no power 
but of God." His seal alone legitimates it, and pours au- 
thority through it. It is a subordinate department of God's 
oivn government of the earth, and must ever be held in har- 
mony with his own higher government and law. It is a 
glorious reform, when despotism gives place to free institu- 
tions, with the divine conception of the sanctity of govern- 
ment, and the obligation to obedience. But when men, 
standing, not on the Bible, but the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence, falsely interpret the latter as- meaning that, unless 
each, man, or little knot of men, gives personal consent to 
every particular law, by which he is to be governed, he is not 
bound by its authority, we run at once into confusion and 
anarchy. Each one becomes a law unto himself; and obeys 



24 

only where he consents. Extreme ideas of personal liberty, 
foster a spirit of insubordination to regularly constituted 
authority. Under demagogic reformers, this feeling lately 
became rife in the land. lo-norinoj the divine law : "Thou 
shalt not curse the ruler of thy people;" "Speak not evil of 
dignities," they criticised and denounced rulers and laws, 
till respect and reverence were gone, and the bond that held 
many to them was as a shred of tow. The sentiment of obedi- 
ence, and subordination to authority was corrupted. In 
family, Church and State, the bonds of order and law were 
broken down. "Young America" appeared on the stage, 
whose characteristic was that he cared little for authority 
anywhere. The scenes of violence and lawlessness through 
which we have passed are fraught with lessons of solemn in- 
struction. The true doctrine of reform, does not thus de- 
grade liberty into mere self-will, or unclothe government of 
its divinely given sanctity of authority, or lead to an insub- 
ordination that renders order, harmony and unity impos- 
sible. 

6. But we must not mistake the relation of radicalism to 
reform. There are three kinds of radicalism. First, a rad- 
icalism of doctrine — marked by attempted improvement of 
the old Bible truths, breaking men's faith in Christianity, 
and running into infidelity. This kind wholly mistakes the 
way of reform. Secondly, a radicalism of means, marked 
by an impetupsity in effort, that will not wait the slow, sure 
process of gospel truth and agencies, but drives the chariot 
with intemperate hand and slashing whip. This kind may 
be laboring in the best interest of men, but by rushing 
fiercely on social evils, and fancying it can sweep them away 
by an instantaneous blow, it is often mistaken and impru- 
dent. The third, is the radicalism of true Christianity, 
laying the axe at the root of all evils, with all the energies 
which the gospel has provided. Christianity is essential and 
true radicalism, in reference to every possible question of 
reform in man's condition, whether moral, social, or political. 
We hear of the conbcrvatism of Christianity. There is suck 



25 

a thing; but it is the conservatism that saves society by lay* 
ing the axe at the root of all the evils, sins and wrongs that 
endanger it. It is not the conservatism that does nothing. 
The sad phenomenon of the prominence of an infidel radi- 
calism in the initial movement.of some of our great reforms — 
the anti-slavery agitation, for instance — has a solemn rebuke 
in it to much of the Christian Church of the land. It does 
not show that Christianity is not the true power of radical 
reform, only that an encrusting conservatism, foreign to it, 
had neutralized its power in the hands of many who were 
set to wield it. The anti-sUvery weapons, used by infidels, 
■were stolen from the armory of the Gospel An indifference 
and dormancy, untrue to Christianity, on the part of many 
orthodox Christians, left a breach to the enemy. The Gos- 
pel was misrepresented. Its Churches and ministry gave 
slavery patrons and defenders. They repeated, not the 
mercy of the good Samaritan, but worse than priest and Le- 
vite, many ministers of the temple joined the thieves and 
robbers to strip and wound. 

7. Bat the triiimijlis of reform, on the principle we have 
presented, authenticate it as the true principle of the world's 
future beneficent progress. Past victories fling their guiding 
light before us. The progress of Christian truth, has been 
the progress of all kinds of social ameliorations, and redress 
of human wrongs. We believe it can be shown, that nearly 
every step in the progress of European civilization, liberty, 
and equality, has been the taking up into the national con- 
science and polity, of some single truth of the great system 
of Christian faith and Christian ethics. Chivalry owed all 
that it had of good, its honor and its courtesy, and regard ta 
the feelings and rights of woman — all of good it had — to the 
principles of the gospel. Feudalism, as the antagonism of 
popular liberties, was destroyed by it. So modern democra- 
cy, in its sense of the equal rights of all, and of the respon- 
sibility of government, is but carrying out detached portions 
of Christian truth. The Reformation of the sixteenth cen- 
tury, was but the streaming forth from the unclasped Bible 
■4 



26 

of Christianity, of its reformatory virtue, as that virtue be- 
gan to operate on the morals and life of men, and the cus^ 
toms and institutions of nations. We have from it, freedom 
of conscience, republican institutions, and all beautiful and 
ameliorating philanthropies. It was a Bible reform, and its 
golden fruits hang on every bough of life. 

Let us behold Thomas Chalmers test the correctness of 
this principle. Ignorance, pauperism and crime, were bur- 
dening his wide parish with all their evils, and crying for 
remedy. Disdaining the various banners of reform proposed 
by false philosophy, or humanitarian sociology, Dr. Chal- 
mers, with the gait of a champion, stepped forward with the 
ancient banner, the old legend still burning on its folds as in 
letters of golden fire, "in this conquer.''' And in it he did 
conquer. He knew that, though the main mission of Chris- 
tianity is to bring men to immortal treasures of joy, it yet, 
by a sublime necessity, scatters beatitudes in the paths of 
mortal life. He believed that it was able to marshal every 
force, and meet every requirement of social existence. He 
applied only gospel truth and agencies, and the parish rose 
in a moral, social and industrial renovation, that made it 
look toward heaven with a happy smile of peace and con- 
tent, like the face of a strong man awakening to health after 
long sickness. It was a radiant demonstration of the re- 
formatory power of Christianity. 

We have had a recent illustration in our country. The 
axe of Christian truth was laid close to the roots of slavery. 
The reformatory power of the Gospel was pressing hard 
against it.' Its friends banded to resist, and in its interest, 
evoked a mighty war against the Union. They determined 
to employ armies and artillery, to save themselves from the 
aggressive energy of Christian sentiment against their wrong. 
Heaven allowed the war they summoned to their aid, to go 
on. Hundreds of battle fields were ploughed by exploding 
shell, and crimsoned with blood. The waves of the conflict 
rolled north, and roared around the walls of our Alma 
Mater. Over this quiet town, the shot and shell shrieked, 



27 

amid deafening artillery thunder for three anxious days, and 
these hills and valleys, dear to us all by old familiarity, lay 
thick with the mangled slain, that fought and fell for the 
Union and right. But the crisis was past. The tide of de- 
feated treason rolled back. War swept the Southern land 
with desolation for another two years. It was a fearful 
strife. We know not how many souls returned to God, her- 
alded by the thunder of the battles on whose fields they left 
their bodies. But the end of the struggle has come, and the 
reformatory energy of Christianity, pressing on its way, even 
through the conflict evoked to arrest it, has buried the dis- 
honored corpse of Slavery, amid the tears of gladness of a 
saved and disenthralled nation. It is a great reform, in the 
line of the true principle, wiping out a thousand minor 
wrongs and woes that clustered in Satanic fellowship under 
the central Upas evil. The stars in their courses fought 
against Sisera, but the Higher than the stars fought against 
those who appealed to the sword, to stay the reformatory 
work of Christianity, when it pressed against their cjierished 
wrong. 

But we must be done. *'The world moves," and if we 
wish to work in the line of its progress, we must take our 
position with the friends of Christianity, and employ its laws 
and agencies. Only thus will our works accredit our com- 
mission as reformers. We have reason to look for a progres- 
sively improved future of our race ; though we believe the 
progress is not quite so rapid as is often pictured by enthu- 
siastic declaimers and money-making lecturers. There are 
multiform wrongs, inequalities and disabilities, yet to be 
remedied. But the application of the teaching and energy 
of the gospel to one moral, social or political excrescence 
after another, is bringing the world gradually nearer the era 
of its hope. The poor and the oppressed are being enfran- 
chised and elevated. More effective than communist or 
agrarian dreams, the cross is proving the great leveler. But 
it levels upward. Perhaps most of us have sometimes, in 
earlier life, had a feeling of incongruity and inappropriate- 



28 

nes9 \u a certain simile of the greatest of the evangelical 
prophets : "It shall come to pass that the mountain of the 
house of the Lord shall be e.-tablished in the top of the 
mountains, and all nations shall flow unto it." We have 
wondered at this strange representation of a flowing upward 
to the mountain summit. But the seeming incongruity was 
needed, to conform the figure to truth. It is but an expres- 
sion of the fact, as it shines in history, that the conversion 
of men and communities, the Christianization of life, social, 
personal and political, is a movement of grand and universal 
elevation. "The House of the Lord," in its laws, forces, 
character, civilization, personal, social and civil beatitudes, 
presents the summit of the ideal elevation of man — the top 
of earth's mountains. And Christianity is bearing the race 
upward to it. When the world shall have gotten up on the 
level of the "House of the Lord," it will be the highest ele- 
vation of mankind, that lies lower than the eternal Paradise 
of God. 



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